


The Best Laid Plans

by pentacs14



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: BAMF! Q, a touch of language and a spot of violence, and Whishaw's Q can snark with the best of them, because he so could have handed Silva's ass back to him if he had enough screentime, cause what good Bond story doesn't?, we all know Bond loves a snarky companion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 03:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentacs14/pseuds/pentacs14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skyfall reimagined if Q was allowed to give Silva a run for his money. Everything is the same right up until Q gains access to Silva's system. Then all hell breaks loose and Bond finds out that Q can do more than just hold his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> Usual disclaimer: Do not own, am not making any profit, etc.
> 
> Is it just me or did Q just steal the show when Skyfall landed? Love me a snarky genius...
> 
> May eventually lead into something more but for now this is all I got.

There's a crystal clear moment in which Bond can see M standing behind Tanner, staring at him with those ancient eyes, and she says “007, you are ready for this?” though it's not a question because they both know how he's going to answer.

He wishes he could go back and slap himself because it is becoming increasingly clear that he is anything but ready, despite all his protests that he is solidly this side of too bloody old for this shit, thank you very much.

It feels like his entire body is on fire. He's tired, sore and there's a frisson of unaccustomed fear snaking up his spine.

His breath comes in short sharp pants that stab at his lungs like shards of glass as he runs flat-out down the corridor.

“Q,” he bites out. “Report!” It's a touch ironic, this reversal of roles, but he hasn't the oxygen to spare to ream the snot-nosed little twit out the way he ought.

A grunt of pain and the sound of a body crumpling to the floor echoes up the hallway and through Bond's earpiece.

He tries to pour more speed into legs already screaming in pain. He's almost positive the only thing keeping him upright is sheer kinetic motion.

Several years, too many trips to medical and, if he were to be brutally honest with himself, a few stone ago he could have taken the corner on a dime and never lost a jot of momentum.

As it is he nearly ricochets off the opposite wall and it is only his stubborn bloody-mindedness that keeps his quaking legs holding him up when he finally comes to a stop.

His mouth is hanging open, his mind idly wondering if it had always been this hard to close his jaw or if he had dislocated it at some point without noticing, as he takes in the scene before him.

Q stands in the middle of the hallway his feet planted wide, his chest heaving, a gun in one hand, the other hand sporting a set of bloody knuckles that no doubt match the purpling bruise on the jaw of the man lying in a heap on the floor.

“Target neutralized,” Q states calmly, his dark eyes snapping.

Bond takes a step forward, not sure yet whether he plans on strangling the man or checking him for injuries.

Before he can decide Q's face hardens. Bond is suddenly staring down the barrel of a gun and he just has time to think 'Not again' before the startling sound of a gunshot echoes off the walls and fire rips through his body.

00Q~00Q~00Q

Bond is prowling the security checkpoint Q is trying to get them past like a caged lion. His whole body is shrilling in pain but he doesn't dare hold still for fear his muscles will seize up.

“I can't believe you shot me,” he gripes, his tone more put out than actually angry.

Q doesn't bother looking up. “And I can't believe what a baby you're being about this. I hardly grazed you.”

The glare Bond levels in his direction would have melted steel but Q is too busy to respond with the appropriate level of fear and awe.

He begins cataloging superfluous parts of the quartermaster's body, wondering which would cause the most pain while leaving the least amount of permanent damage if clipped with a bullet.

The man would be perfectly capable of typing with a perforated earlobe, he's sure.

On the other hand, the jumped up little brat would probably manage to bleed to death just to spite him.

Bond goes back to pacing with a slight hitch to his gait that he flatly refuses to admit is a limp. No matter how much pain his knee is in. 

“I should start requesting hazard pay,” he snarks. “It seems friendly fire is starting to become MI6's new MO.” 

“Eve hadn't technically been cleared for field duty, you know.” Q glances up with a tiny smirk, never missing a keystroke. “She was out there because they figured if they sent another double-oh you'd have dumped him in three seconds flat and gone haring off on your own. So really you've no one to blame but yourself for that mess.”

Bond has the grace to wince, knowing that was precisely what he would have done and hating that M knew him well enough to use it against him. Hating that she had used it against him, especially after the telling-off she'd given him back in Bolivia about using people.

“So tell me,” Bond grinds out as he glowers at Q's back. “Have you been cleared for field duty or did I deserve that shot too?”

“Oh, stop sulking. It's hardly becoming in a man of your advanced years.” Bond bares his teeth at the smug look Q shoots his way. “This is MI6 headquarters, not some godless foreign land with no concept of how to brew a decent cup of Earl Grey. One would hardly consider it the field. Besides you needed someone to get you through lock down and no one else would volunteer. You're rather stuck with me regardless of my field status, I'm afraid.”

“Lucky me,” Bond says as he rolls his eyes.

“Really, 007,” Q huffs as he turns back to the information on his screen. “One would think you'd be more grateful seeing as I managed to shoot the man sneaking up behind you quite a bit more effectively than I shot you.”

“Small favors,” Bond grouses. “You still could have warned me.”

“Then he would have ducked, I would have missed, and there would have been a completely pointless gunfight in a corridor with no cover that would have seriously depleted our already limited ammo supply.”

“How bloody pragmatic,” Bond says with a wry twist to his lips. “Would you have been so coldly clinical if it had been one of your little gizmos between you and that man?”

“I hardly consider that a fair comparison. Most of the tools I give you are irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind inventions that you don't even have the decency to allow the ink on the patents to dry before you return in pieces. Or not at all.”

It's an old bone, worried to death by every quartermaster Bond has ever met, and Q is barely paying attention to the conversation at this point as his eyes follow lines of code and his fingers flash over the keys.

“You Q branch boffins are all alike,” Bond mocks. “Treating your guns and lasers like children, doting over your little gadgets like first-time fathers. No consideration for the human element.”

Q hums distractedly in response, not even bothering to keep up the pretense of listening. Bond doesn't much care, at this point he's talking simply for something to do, something to distract himself from the pain and forced inactivity.

This is the worst part of every mission, he thinks, the in between times. When you know the plan, know what needs to be done, but you can't quite reach the enemy.

He starts prowling again. He was never very good at holding still at the best of times and right now he's wishing he had a stiff drink, a hard shag and a handful of painkillers, in no particular order.

None of which he's likely to get waiting for Q to get them past this way station while Silva runs around MI6's basement playing hide and seek like an overgrown man child.

“Ah,” Q says happily. “Nearly there.”

“About bloody time,” Bond mutters darkly. He moves up behind where the younger man is kneeling, his laptop hooked into the control panel by a sheaf of wires.

“No need to be cross,” Q admonishes. “If it were easy Silva and his men would be traipsing all over the place.”

“The man does have an affinity for rats. Maybe he'll make himself useful and rid poor Tanner of the lot while he's down here.” Bond's voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Better yet maybe a particularly nasty one will eat him and save me the trouble.”

“Feeling your age, 007?” There is a healthy dose of venom lurking behind the teasing banter, the young man is obviously still holding a grudge over that spots comment back when they first met. “Hoping for an easy out?”

“You're right, I shouldn't be so cruel. Probably give the poor thing indigestion.”

Q doesn't respond for several long minutes and Bond falls silent. The only sounds are Q's keys clacking at manic speeds and Bond's irritable stomping. 

“That's got it!” Q cries excitedly into the charged silence.

“Really?” All Bond sees is scrolling code, no different than the last five times he checked the screen over his companion's shoulder.

Q's grin is razor-sharp and stained red in the flashing emergency lights, his eyes full of unholy glee as they meet Bond's. 

“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war,” he proclaims and Bond has to fight down a shiver. Maybe there had been something more than idle boasting to their conversation at the National.

The sound of the doors hissing open causes Bond to spin, his gun unwavering as he aims at whatever new menace may appear.

Q laughs as he winds up his cords and tucks everything away into a messenger bag. “Menacing perfectly innocent doorways now, are we? Are you this high strung out in the field?”

“Yes.” Bond flattens himself against the inside wall so that he can eye the corridor beyond. “It's considered something of an asset actually.”

“Really,” Q says mildly as he steps deliberately past Bond. “And the fact that I knew no one was out here before I so precipitously opened the doors means nothing, I suppose.” He glances back archly. 

“Old habits?” Bond offers with an unapologetic shrug before following the quartermaster. Not before he takes a careful look down the other way to make sure no one was sneaking up on them.

“Are almost as hard to kill off as you are, it seems.” Q pauses at an intersection, this one identical to several they've seen along the way. “This is where we part ways, I'm afraid.”

Bond hesitates. He works better alone, always has, always will. But he finds himself oddly loathe to let this engaging young man wander off on his own with Silva on the loose.

He never could resist someone able to keep up with his laconic sense of humor. 

“Come now,” Q scoffs. “You can't tell me sentimentality has ever played a part in the double-oh handbook.”

Bond grins as he glances down a branching hallway. There was no indication of where Silva or any of his men could be, everything is still and quiet.

One direction seems as likely as the next so he chooses one at random and starts edging down it carefully under Q's amused gaze.

“No, Q branch has always held that particular honor.” Bond lifts his gun slightly in farewell as he turns away. “I'll try not to let anything eat this one.” 

Laughter trails behind him as he strides away.

00Q~00Q~00Q

*Earlier – MI6 Control Room while Q tries to tap into Silva's system*

Q taps the enter key and immediately he knows something's gone horribly wrong.

Bond stares at the screen in bemusement as Silva's program twists in on itself, bleeding red and writhing across the screen.“Is that good?” he asks doubtfully.

“Does it look good?” Q mutters as his fingers fly over the keys. “Remind me never to take decrypting advice from a double-oh again.”

Q knows his frantic coding won't be able to reverse the damage, that at most he is slowing things down and buying time, but he also knows that nothing Silva has could possibly get past the security protocols he'd implemented after his hasty promotion. 

This is a rearguard action he's fighting but he'll be damned before he allows some hackneyed sociopath with mommy issues and a vintage Sinclair worm his way past MI6's defenses without at least a token fight on his part. 

Both he and Bond spin around at the sound of the access hatches popping open one by one.

“Oh, he is a clever boy,” Q breathes in reluctant admiration. 

“Threat detected,” a pleasant, if irritatingly monotone, voice states over the PA system. “Threat detected. Threat detected.”

“What the bloody hell is that?” Bond asks over the sound of panicked chatter.

“That would be the automated system that is going to keep Silva from hacking into MI6. Again.”

Bond turns to glare at the slight man now leaning against the desk and sipping calmly from his ubiquitous Scrabble mug as if he hasn't a care in the world.

Q returns the look mildly, it's hardly his fault if the agent can't see the whole picture. 

“Silva's been planning this for years. Patrice? Severine? Pawns he sacrificed in order to draw you in. He wanted you to find him, to bring him here, to give him access to MI6 and M. He knew we would try to hack his personal system looking for clues. It was a Trojan horse both literally and metaphorically. The perfect setup to throw us all off the trail.”

“Obviously,” Bond scoffs. “He set us to chasing our tails and we set to with a vengeance. What I want to know is what the hell we're doing about it. I presume you planned for this eventuality after the last attack.” 

The quartermaster lifts a delicate brow. Maybe this double-oh wasn't the blunt instrument he appeared on paper.

“We are giving him a false sense of security.”

“False?” It's Bond's turn to lift a pale blonde brow. “It doesn't seem false at the moment.”

“Oh, it's false alright.” 

“Initiating lock down overrides,” the female voice announces. “Lock down initiated.”

Bond's eyes narrow as all the doors slam shut once more and the red emergency lighting comes to life.

“That's the big plan?” he asks in faint derision. “Shutting the doors?”

“It beats having him running loose in MI6 headquarters while most of the higher ups are at M's hearing,” Q replies with an unconcerned shrug. He seems singularly unaffected by the noise and commotion going on around him. “I've read his files. He has a habit of missing the forest for the trees. He's so fixated on M, and by extension you, that he's forgotten that there are other people involved in this little drama of his. People who might have as big a stake in this as the three of you.”

Bond doesn't wait for Q to finish psychoanalyzing Silva before he turns to stride purposefully towards the doors. He tugs but nothing happens.

“It won't open,” he says accusingly as Q joins him.

“Of course it won't open. In case you haven't noticed,” Q gestures to the speakers from which the voice continues to drone, “we happen to be in lock down.”

“So I heard,” Bond replies with a grimace. “Look, I have to get out there. If Silva's half the chess master you and I seem to think he is then this whole inquest into our affairs is part of it. M is a sitting duck out there. I need to get to him before he gets to her.”

“Then there's no time to waste, wouldn't you say?” Q asks with a grin before turning to the room at large. “Listen up, everyone!” 

He doesn't bother to raise his voice but somehow every eye in the room has turned his way regardless. 

“We may be under attack,” the quartermaster states calmly, “but we need to keep our wits about us and get word to those in command. I want a direct line to M that is both untraceable and discreet. Someone get on it.”

“I need several of you on the monitors,” he continues. “We need to locate how far Silva got before lock down. Also I want to know how many people were in the building when it shut down and where they are. Everyone else I want on Silva's engine. I want to know what it was meant to do to our system, how we can use that to our advantage and I want to know yesterday.”

“We are the best our country has to offer, people,” Q states confidently. “And we are going to prove that by neutralizing our enemies and keeping them contained until we have more orders. Get to work.”

Bond watches in astonishment as a room full of computer geeks and information specialists pull themselves together, transforming the hysteria into a controlled chaos, at Q's short speech. 

For all his rumpled clothes, ridiculous glasses and posh airs Q has a charisma about him that draws the best from those around him, a charisma that has nothing to do with sharp suits or machismo or killer charm but complete faith that he knows what he is doing and that everything will end up precisely the way he wants it to.

“You and you,” Q snags two technicians bustling past. “I need a way to plug into the physical mainframe. What have we got on hand? Mr. Bond feels the need to go wandering and I'm worried if we don't get him out soon enough he'll put his back out trying to force open the doors. Or worse, he'll attempt to shoot a man-shaped hole in our walls.”

“Who says I won't succeed?” Bond smiles blandly as the two men throw him startled glances and scurry away to do Q's biding.

00Q~00Q~00Q

**Author's Note:**

> I've got ideas for another chapter but it's hard to get the tone just right. Bond doesn't want to give up the limelight but Q wants a whack at Silva as bad as the next guy. Unfortunately my brain is going all wibbly-wobbly (but without the good doctor to put it back to rights for me) and things are coming out just a hair too far fetched. Give me some time and we'll see what happens.


End file.
